One-Line Hero Summaries for New Players

I recently put together some very brief summaries of the SotM heroes for when I had new players over to try the game.  My goal was to capture the general idea of the character in less than 110 characters, so that I could print them all out cleanly -- one line each on a single page.  New folks could then look through the list to figure out which hero they'd like to try out. The heroes are grouped by complexity, mostly to let players know which ones benefit from having more knowledge of the character deck. Since I've now used this a couple of times when introducing people to the game, I thought I'd share it here in case outhers might want to use it. [Thanks to AlexxKay, for giving me some helpful suggestions with this.]

Charley Sumner / @SeeSome

[Edit: per suggestions, I moved Argent Adept to the 3rd grouping]

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SEESOME'S SUMMARIES

One-Line Guides to the Sentinels of the Multiverse Heroes for New Player

Mostly Straightforward Heroes:

EXPATRIETTE - An expert sharpshooter. She loves guns, especially her custom handguns, Pride and Prejudice.

HAKA - An immortal brawler. His abilities can prevent damage, heal himself, & boost his attacks.

KNYFE - A secret agent with energy blades. Her military & espionage training give her tactical advantages.

LEGACY - A patriotic hero. He has flight & super-strength, but his greatest power is inspiring his team.

RA - An archaeologist who wields the Staff of Ra. His firebolts deal large amounts of damage.

TACHYON - A speedster. She starts weak, but her attacks get more powerful as her velocity increases.

TEMPEST - An aquatic alien. M'kk uses weather-control powers to damage enemies and aid teammates.

THE WRAITH - A dark vigilante. Her gadgets deal damage, shield herself, and control the battlefield.

Somewhat Trickier Heroes:

BUNKER - A military tank-suit. He builds up devastating weapon combos, but they can take time to deploy.

CHRONO-RANGER - A time-traveling old west sheriff & bounty-hunter. He always gets his man... or thing.

FANATIC - An angelic warrior. She wields divine powers, some of which damage her along with her enemies.

MISTER FIXER - A master of martial arts, and a damn fine auto mechanic. He has a versatile toolbox.

THE NATURALIST - A shifter. He can become a gazelle, rhino, or crocodile; each with different abilities.

OMNITRON-X - A robot hero. It can upgrade its body with a multitude of offensive & defensive modifications.

PARSE - An archer who can sense hidden connections. Her powers detect and exploit enemy weaknesses.

UNITY - A technopath. She can turn scrap metal into robot golems with a wide variety of powers.

THE VISIONARY - A psychic. She can control environments and enemies, or just hit them with mental blasts.

More Complicated Heroes:

ABSOLUTE ZERO – Thermodynamic Hero. His cryo-suit keeps him alive & lets him manipulate cold and fire.

ARGENT ADEPT - A bard. He knows songs for every occasion, but having the right tune at the right time is tricky.

NIGHTMIST - Mistress of black magic. She dishes out lots of Infernal damage -- to herself as well as others

THE SCHOLAR - A mystic. He uses the Philosopher’s Stone to alter his body, heal, and redirect damage.

THE SENTINELS - A mini-team of four heroes. Weak individually, together they have a multitude of abilities.

SETBACK - An unlucky hero. His risky behavior can turn misfortunes into boosts when the odds change.

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I would move Argent Adept to the third group. Otherwise good job

Yeah, I was thinking that - the Adept is one of the more complicated heroes but he's EPIC once you get the hang of his deck and he's totally not my favourite hero or anything like that ;).

Per Humble-Knight and Ameena’s suggestions, I’ve moved Argent Adept to the 3rd group - meaning playing him is easier the more familiar you are with his deck.  Thanks for the the feedback on that.  I’m not as familiar with Adept as RC/IR is the one set I don’t have yet, but December’s coming soon and I’ve dropped a bunch of hints .

Yeah, I would say that to begin with, the Adept is up there with Ab'Zero in terms of complexity, it's just complexity in a different way - Ab'Zero is all about the numbers and working stuff out in terms of nuking himself and redirecting it and increasing/decreasing it and all the other things. With the Adept you have all the different chains you can do of mixing various different instruments and songs, whether it's your turn or not - once the Adept is set up with even a couple of songs and an instrument or two, any hero who can let another hero use a power is probably gonna get the most out of doing so if they let the Adept use a power, because even if he can't properly chain a whole load of extra power uses himself he can usually let other people do extra stuff...like Fanatic retrieving and replaying Wrathful Retribution the round after she just played it, as an example :D.

Another reason why Argent Adept may count as a three is that, like Unity or Absolute Zero, a bad shuffle can leave him with no useful Power for the first few turns.

Good point, forgot to mention that - yeah, if your starting hand contains neither a song nor a copy of Arcane Cadence (the latter of which may somehow fail at getting you a song or a second copy of itself) then you won't be able to use your power. But given that eighteen cards in the deck are songs and four are Arcane Cadence, that's over half the deck right there...and if you have an Instrumental Conjuration on hand then you get to put out an instrument and draw a total of two cards during your turn. That said, the Adept can be a bit slow to get started, and with the lowest starting hp total of any hero (not counting the individual Sentinels) he can sometimes get pounded down before he can get anywhere. But in my experience that doesn't happen too often...though pretty much all my games only have three heroes so incoming damage is generally pretty low :).

Just a minor point, but Tempest isn’t ever referred to as “he” in any of the background stuff.

Correct - Tempest appears to be genderless, from what we understand. Good catch!

Yes, that's an excellent catch.  The art implies "male" but the bio writers clearly went out of their way to avoid using any gender-specific pronouns so I've altered my one-liner accordingly.

FYI, the inclusion of a gender-specific pronoun in my one-liners* was intentional as I often play with my 10yo daughter and a couple of her friends.  Since the girls usualy prefer to play the female heroes, I wanted them to be able to know which ones were which.

• excepting Omnitron-X and (now) Tempest.

Note for the Devs: Given how popular the female heroes are in my house, I'd like to make a request for a future promo card to be a version of Bunker with a female operator.  

It could be a ridiculous conversion with unicorns and flowers painted on the armor and give the suit boobs.

Nah, no respectable comic would ever be so dumb.

I'd love to see the pilot after Vance be a woman, but I don't know if we will ever see the end of Vance.

Since I think Bunker as more War Machine than Iron Man I'm waiting for another hero in power suit.    Maybe we will get our female Tony Stark.  

While I appreciate and emphatically approve of taking note of such things I do want to bring up that "he" is gender inclusive in English.

Right. So Tempest should be referred to with "it".

Or 'they'. Which is in fact grammatically correct in English.

Only really in formal writing where for strange archaic reasons use of the singular “they” is frowned upon and when the gender is unknown or can be any potential gender (say referring to a position or a title rather than a specific person) rather than where gender is explicitly non male or potentially non-binary.

I think in general usage “he” is quite certainly not gender inclusive, and even that formal use shows more patriarchal bias rather than true neutrality.

Tempest is all of us. Tempest is a "we"

What we need to do is learn what Tempest calls himself.  His race probably has a word.

"We are all Kosh."

That claim has often been made, but I don not think it is factually true, based on a lifetime of observing written and spoken use of the english language.  It would be more accurate to say that, in english-speaking culture, male is the default gender.  Some of us are trying to change this, but it's an uphill battle.

In language arguments of descriptivist vs prescriptivist, I almost always land on the descriptivist side*.  I fully embrace the growing use of "they" as an indeterminate-gender singular pronoun.

• I do hold the line at "literally".

"We're not sure, so we'll assume male" doesn't sound terribly inclusive to me.

I’m not fond of saying something “should” be referred some way because of launguage “rules”. I’ve clearly touched a few nerves so allow me to unring this bell.

In the most technical, prescriptive interpretation Tempest could be referred to as “he”.

I’m terribly sorry if my previous statement ruffled any feathers, but I didn’t go around and say “Oh, so we should depersonalize Tempest with the term ‘it’, like any old chair, garbage can, or square of toilet paper,” or “So Tempest doesn’t get to be a singular being, but a ‘they’? Boo! Tempest doesn’t get to be a singular individual. For shame,” when others shared their perspectives.

I’m assuming these terms were brought up to further information in this discussion and to provide a perspective. I provided a point I found interesting though not necessarily one I hold. Please do not assume I’m furthering the mancentric maleocracy or denying Tempest’s gender or self expression. I’m just a guy with a degree in English Literature with a tendency to splice way too many commas who had an opportunity to share something. Goodness knows I don’t get much of an opportunity when I’m brewing coffee or selling comic books.

It may not be clear, but I’m quite fond of Tempest. I wouldn’t ever want to simplify how deeply interesting and complex of a being he/she/they/it/we/xhe/xhey/Tempest is.